Those who Favour Fire
by Bella-n-Edward4Eternity
Summary: Set along the course of the anime, Totsuka Tatara may have lost his life in the Kings' battle, but his meddling tendencies extend from beyond the grave. Along with keeping his clan out of trouble, he's dabbling in a little harmless matchmaking. His verve for life doesn't stop at death.


**Disclaimer: I own nothing, characters belong to their respective producers, authors and the like.**

**A/N: Cross-posted to Archives of Our Own under the pen name hati_skoll**

"King... King, open your eyes. King!"

Bloody hell, what was with the ruckus this early in the morning? Mikoto turned on his side, trying to shut out the noise. Only this time, someone poked at his ribs rather insistently.

"King, come on!"

Mikoto finally deemed to crack open an eye, "What is it?"

"King, don't you know where we are?" Totsuka grinned, peering into Mikoto's face all too blatantly.

Mikoto rubbed a hand over his face. He wasn't up for twenty questions. What ungodly hour was it for Tatara to have decided on pulling him out of his sleep? Hell, his sleep-drugged mind refused to work, and his limbs still felt heavy from whatever work-out he'd been put through in the day. Strange, he wasn't usually this... burned out.

He pulled himself up and glanced around. Oh, they were above Kusanagi's precious bar. That wasn't unusual. After all, Mikoto frequently took his naps there. So why had Tatara phrased his question like that?

"We're above the bar."

Totsuka made a sound, just close enough to the buzzer on game shows that said, 'Wrong answer.' Mikoto raised a doubtful brow.

"Where are we?" he asked.

Totsuka smiled, eyes crinkling, "Above the bar."

Mikoto sighed, half in exasperation. But then, he paused. He remembered blood, death, gunshots, the Colorless King, Tatara dead. That wasn't right. Tatara couldn't be dead, could he? Tatara was still here, Tatara was with him, Tatara was alive. Wasn't he?

Totsuka's smile gentled, as realization dawned in Mikoto's eyes. Mikoto reached out to touch the younger man, to hold onto him, and he could feel Tatara's arm solid and real underneath his palm. Flesh and bones, real. Spirits shouldn't feel like that, should they?

"Where are we?" Mikoto asked again.

"We're wherever you want to be. We're above the bar, and we're not. Can you understand that, King?"

"You've always been a confusing guy."

"Yes, well, death doesn't change a lot of things," Totsuka laughed.

He tilted his head for a short moment, then he amended softly, "It doesn't change the important things, at least."

Mikoto ran a hand through his hair. His head hurt, could his head hurt in a dream? Weren't they supposed to be painless? He glanced at Tatara briefly, and there was an odd ache in his chest as he did, "You're wrong. It does."

Totsuka didn't attempt to assert his opinion, his silence was argument enough. Mikoto knew his clansman well, he knew Tatara well. Before there was Homra, before the power, the responsibilities to the city, to the Red Clan, they had been just kids, hanging out, having fun. They had been just kids. He would have preferred to stay that way. All that power only gave him an empty hole in his life, an emptiness that seemed all the starker now that Tatara was gone.

"What do you want?" he asked, brusquely.

"To be honest, King, I'm unable to move on because I've left several things unfulfilled in life."

"What are they?"

Totsuka pursed his lips very solemnly, "What would you do about them, King?"

"You need me to help you with it, don't you?"

Totsuka just shrugged.

"We don't have all day." Or night.

"All right, King," Totsuka leaned in towards him, and lowered his voice conspiringly, "You see, I'm unable to 'move on', because, well."

"Yes?"

"I've yet to see King do H things with anyone."

Tatara grinned up at him teasingly, as Mikoto resisted the urge to hit the man. There was something not quite right about hitting a dead friend.

Totsuka went on blithely, "It's true. I've often worried about King's romantic pursuits. Because King doesn't seem to have a sex drive like any normal, hormonal teenage boy, even when he was at _that_ age. Seeing that sexy sensei undress didn't even do a thing for King."

That earned Totsuka a relatively hard strike on the top of his head. The younger man grimaced in pain, and the scene was so damnably familiar and nostalgic, Mikoto felt something twist his gut. Hard.

"You're still as annoying and carefree as..."

"When I was alive? Of course, death doesn't change the important things," Totsuka smiled.

Mikoto only grunted in forced accession. Bloody hell, he didn't even know if any of this was real. He didn't know if it was really Tatara here in his dream, communing with him from beyond the grave. Or if it was just his mind starting to wear out after the loss of his friend, his Tatara. But on second thought, he'd never be able to come up with Tatara's crazy antics on his own. Tatara's reactions were all Tatara.

"Why are you here?"

"You don't want me here?" Totsuka replied, looking all too dramatically injured by that.

"I want you to be at peace."

"I'm at peace, King."

Mikoto arched a brow at that.

"All right, I'm not exactly at peace. I'm still here, visiting you in your dream, aren't I? But revenge won't bring me back."

Mikoto turned away, "But it'll make me feel better."

"Would it? Truly?"

"I don't want your murderer to get away with it."

Totsuka looked as if he wanted to say something, wanted to say something so very desperately, but then he didn't. He looked downwards to his feet, "I won't interfere with your decisions."

"You're not going to try to talk me out of it?"

"I'll leave that to Kusanagi-san."

"Kusanagi wants your murderer brought to justice too."

"He shouldn't be encouraging this sort of bad behavior," Totsuka pouted slightly, then flinched as if something hurt, or discomforted, him.

"You haven't told me why you're here."

"Maybe I just missed King, and wanted to see your face for a bit."

Mikoto leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. He wouldn't be able to pry anything out of Tatara if the man didn't want to share.

Totsuka sighed, before cheerfully planting himself beside Mikoto, "What's on your mind, King?"

"You. The Colorless King. Revenge. Sleep."

"You know, technically, you're sleeping."

"And thanks to you, I'm going to be waking up more tired than I was, before going to sleep."

"You haven't been getting enough sleep, these days."

Mikoto cracked open an eye, "Whose fault do you think that is?"

"Not me, surely. All I did was to die. Quite quickly, in fact."

"Did it hurt?"

Totsuka smiled up at him, gently, "I won't lie and tell you that the gunshot was painless. I mean, it hurt. It hurt, but it stopped hurting after a while."

"Did you suffer?"

Totsuka shook his head, "There is kindness in a quick death, King. I would have died either way, and I could have died slowly. But I waited just long enough to see Yata-chan and Kusanagi-san, and there was only numbness after a while."

"We would have saved you."

"There are some things you wouldn't have been able to do, no matter how powerful you are," Totsuka said seriously.

Mikoto made a sound that was part disdain and part disbelief, and Totsuka smiled wider at that.

"Are you going to stay with me throughout this dream?"

"If you want me to."

Mikoto's fingers tightened on Tatara's sleeve, but he didn't say a word. Totsuka understood his King anyway, he always did and he always would. Death didn't change the important things, and Totsuka needed to make Mikoto see that. He needed to make Mikoto see before everything was shot to hell, before it was too late.

"Were you afraid to fall asleep, King?"

Mikoto glanced at his clansman from the corner of his eyes, before saying simply, "You aren't around anymore."

"You need sleep."

"If all my dreams were like this, I don't think I'd have any issue with falling asleep."

Totsuka rested his head against his King's shoulder, "I can't visit every night."

Mikoto just kept silent at that, but there was a bitter taste to his silence that said he wasn't quite pleased with Totsuka's response. Totsuka put his hand over Mikoto's, lightly. And Mikoto stiffened at the touch, before relaxing into Tatara's gentle warmth.

"If you're afraid to burn up everything around you in your sleep, I'm not the only person who could stop you in your tracks."

Mikoto glared at Tatara half-heartedly, "You were the chain that held me back."

"That's because you made me your chain. You made me the person who'd stop you from destroying everything else and destroying yourself. But you could make someone else that person. I know a handful of people who'd be more than willing to take up that responsibility."

"Yata's too... exuberant. And Kusanagi's too much of a nag."

"Maybe you should look outside of Homra," Totsuka hid a smile.

Mikoto gave him a look, "Who do you have in mind?"

"A certain King who's had a special place in his heart reserved for you, since quite some time ago," Totsuka suggested, "He's quite the decent guy, really."

"Decent wouldn't be a word I'd use to describe the Blue King of Scepter 4."

"He's interesting. You have to admit that, at the very least."

"You think everyone's interesting, Tatara."

"He's strong enough to keep you in line, and powerful enough to keep you under control."

Mikoto looked at his clansman warily, "You _were_ joking about the H things, weren't you? I'm not supposed to help you fulfill some kind of SM fantasy?"

Totsuka burst out laughing, "I don't see you as an uke, King. Although I suppose, you could pass for a masochistic seme?"

Mikoto let his fire pour out from his fingertips, intending to shock Tatara in retaliation, but the flames dissipated once they touched his clansman. As they would do when Tatara had still been alive. Mikoto felt some strange stirrings in his heart, something he couldn't exactly lay a finger on.

"Do you still have it? Homra's mark?"

"Of course."

Mikoto gestured vaguely at Totsuka, and Totsuka knew what his King wanted, so he turned to a side, presenting his back to Mikoto. And the Red King lifted the hem of Tatara's shirt, exposing a smooth expanse of creamy skin, marked a brilliant, vivid red with Homra's insignia. Totsuka Tatara carried the mark of the Red King, Mikoto's mark, even in death. Mikoto breathed in deep. There it was again, that little twinge in his chest. Whoever said that dreams were painless had never once dreamt in their annoyingly blessed lives.

"King?"

Mikoto pulled back his hand abruptly. He hadn't realized he'd been tracing the flaming red lines stark on Tatara's skin.

"Nothing," he said.

Totsuka put his shirt down and turned back to face his King, smiling a little uncertainly, "Munakata-san isn't a bad person. Give it some thought? Please?"

Mikoto made a vague sound that could have passed for consent, and Totsuka grinned wider.

"I should leave you to your sleep then," Totsuka said, but made no move to leave.

"No," Mikoto said, "Stay."

They sat together in a comfortable sort of silence, only broken when Mikoto shifted to look at Tatara squarely in the face.

"What is it?"

"Why is it so important?"

Totsuka feigned ignorance, "What is?"

"That I put myself at the mercy of Scepter 4."

"You're never at anyone's mercy, King," Totsuka laughed softly.

Mikoto stared into his clansman's eyes unwaveringly, "You're wrong."

Tatara was wrong. He was wrong, but he didn't know that. Of course, he didn't. Mikoto hadn't said anything. He hadn't said the things he should have, when Tatara was alive. He should say those things now, in this dream, when Tatara was with him, but he couldn't. He wanted to, but he couldn't.

Totsuka smiled at him, as if he knew what Mikoto wanted to say. And the dream faded to black.


End file.
